Terrapin Station

There can be redemption!

O, give thanks unto the Lord, for She is good!

Her mercies endureth forever!

Give thanks with me!  My dear friend Elastigirl has had good news in her ongoing process toward ordination in the Episcopal Church. 

On January 10 of 2008, I learned the horrible news that after over 6 years of discernment and seminary (with her graduation scheduled for this May), the Local Diocese Standing Committee had "not discerned a call" to ordination.  This, after a 45 minute meeting. 

EG has borne this and additional slaps and insults from this Diocese with incredible grace.  She has been an example to me of what it means to faithfully follow God's call when men get in the way. 

Obviously, this is not about me; and yet, it has affected me deeply over the past year.  It has occasioned a tremendous amount of anger and soul searching.  It is also the reason that I am now on the Vestry of my church - I went to my rector and said, "I am so angry - you have to help me find a way to do something about this."  He said, "You need to run for Vestry."  So here I am attending monthly meetings about the budget...  :)  and not being sure at all how that is helping Elastigirl's cause.  I do understand and believe that I cannot change my church if I leave it...

However, the way that has emerged for her is not in our diocese, but in the Diocese to our West, which has recently been left by its bishop and large number of people who did not like the direction that TEC is going.  The new Diocese?  From all accounts, a place of joy, inclusion, and Christian mission. 

Please pray for Elastigirl, the Diocese of Fort Worth, and for my current diocese. 

 

- Rebirth, Eric Tamm

As I continue to pray for healing and rebirth in the newly-living Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, I point your attention to this great post at Katie Sherrod's place: 

Litany for Healing Homophobia.  Written by the Rev'd Joseph A. Harmon, Pastor, Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City, NJ.  Permission freely granted for liturgical use, with attribution. [I did not take the time to seek permission so I am just pointing you to Katie's place, where she did so.]

Sunday Thoughts

Having church at home today.  I am just too cooked to get out.  Sorry, folks. 

Continuing to be excessively angry at some of the most mundane things ... other drivers ... unnecessary stupidity ... Rush Limbaugh and his ilkiness ... people who will not recycle glass and plastic when we have curbside pickup and NO required sorting ... Lent.

this sounds like I am being highly critical of all but myself; trust me, I'm in there too. 

God, help me be gentle today.  With everyone.

Today I'll be reviewing the Borg and Crossan book, The Last Week, preparatory to leading the RevGals discussion of it tomorrow.  Have you finished it?  Get to reading, if you haven't! 

Whaaat!? Weather Report plus bonus boring news

The flowering trees (Bradford pears, redbuds) have done their thing and gone to leaf.  The spireas, azaleas, tulips, and irises are out.  The world is carpeted with oak pollen (yuck).  We've enjoyed rain the last week, but also temps in the 70's and 80's. 

But then last night it got cold, cold and windy.  Lows in the 20's, and this morning we had SNOW flurries.  We have a wind advisory all day.  My cold-sensitive hubby is rolled up in the bed with the red plush blanket.  I feel fine, but am wearing shoes in the house (which tells you it's coolish). 

We went to his Lenten Concert last night at Big Enormous Fancy Dallas Church.  It was lovely except neither of us cared for last piece, an excessively dissonant modern "Miserere."  Afterwards, he said to me, "Wasn't that Miserere awful?!"  "Well, I was happy when you stopped singing it," I said.  "I clapped!"  We are snobs, if you please; we just likes our music to have a melody.  Oh wait; that probably makes us hayseeds.  Oh well. 

Today I am reorganizing part of home office.  No kudos, please; it is necessitated by the fact that a car title is not in the file where it should be, and so I must go through the piles to see if I can't find it.  Because he wants to sell that car, oh, TODAY.  Sigh. 

Lunch is steamed broccoli and salad, with a little fish later.  Hey, have you tried those Ziploc steamer bags?  Awesome!  And reuseable to boot. 

Ken decided that he likes everything that goes into a hamburger but not the bread (who is this person!?) so we are going to try Hamburger Salads, a la Taco Salads, for dinner.  Mine will have crumbled Gardenburgers instead of the beef. 

Josie and Boudreaux are sad that they have to be plucked every time they come in from outside....the oak pollen is a killer.  But then they get lots of brushings from their dad, and that is happy. 

My dad is in Atlanta helping the Anglican Church in North America get set up.  He is a church government wonk from way back.  Sigh.  My mom is home alone.  If you think about it, stop by her blog and say hi! 

 

Friday Five: Blogroll Spotlight

As posted by ME at RGBP:  On my blog sidebar is a list titled, "Blogs I Read Every Day." After my mother became a blogger, she asked me how I could possibly read that many blogs daily!? I had to confess it then: Okay, I don't read them all every day! I have over 100 on there! But I have favorites, and you do too.
Some of you probably use feed readers to let you know when your favorite bloggers have posted...not me, not yet. I just have folks who are part of my day-to-day.

So for today's Friday Five, give us five blogs you visit regularly. These can be RevGal and Pal bloggers and others ... or news sites, knitting sites, etc. Who are you showing the love to on a pretty constant basis?

Hopefully we will all get to know some new bloggy friends this way!

Hmm.

I always like to see what Songbird's up to.  She is a RG friend who became an IRL friend 3 years ago.  Great writing, poetry, dog, ministry, and children stories. 

I also spend a good deal of time at my new friend Ruth's place.  She is a rose-grower, writer, knitter and reader.  I am fascinated by her current project with The Artist's Way...which, like so many things, 'I started one time!' 

Ms. Lauralew, blogging as Episcogranny, enriches my life whenever I go by...recently she has been baking bread and I'm drooling just thinking about it. 

You never know what you are going to find over at Mindy's.  So that rocks my world.  She is crafty, funny as heck, and the Queen of Pantipalooza. 

And a new one to me, but very dear, is Adventures of a Dedicated Soul.  He is an Episcopal priest and I get an original prayer from him by e-mail each day...which so often addresses just what I need.  The website includes some of those.  (& yes, he is a he, though his WeatherPixie looks like a chick to me...I know his wife, too...)

You needn't be a RevGal to play!  Let me know if you do and I'll come visit you and your bloggy buddies. 

My Eyes! My Eyes!

 

This was on the newsstand when I went to the grocery yesterday.  I wanted to run away screaming.  Buy up all the copies and recycle them.  Spray paint them.  Cry.  It looked like an explosion of 1982, just 40 miles down the road from me. 

Instead I was grateful that we now have a President who is a grown up and has a professional demeanor. 

D Magazine is a publication about Dallas life...the kind of Dallas life that I emphatically do NOT live or want.  Very fancy, those who appear in the pages of D Magazine.  Including the latest denizens of Preston Hollow, the tony tony area of mansions where they will be residing. 

I wish them joy, and I wish that I may never see a photo like this in the grocery store checkout line...ever again. 

The Whole Truth about the Sock Heel

I realized, reading the comments to the previous, that I sort of lied.  No, I didn't just "read the instructions."  That way, for me, lies madness.  First, I did something else.  And second.  And probably five times throughout the process.

As a VERY visual learner, I really need to see something kinetic be done to understand it.  That is why knitting is something you really should do with your Mamma or your Aunts or your Songbird right next to you.  But if they inconveniently live far away, and your knitting Meetup group is not for three weeks, well then you turn to your friend at KnittingHelp.com.  

Amy Finlay is the knitter, the hands and voice at KnittingHelp.  When the sock cast-on made me want to cry, I went and watched her hands do it on a snazzy little video.  Ditto for turning the heel.  Annoyingly, she was not doing the EXACT sock pattern I was, but it gave me enough of an idea that when I did this bizarre thing with my handwork that I had never seen done before, I had confidence that the knitting and I were not going to slide right off the face of the earth into a pool of bubbling lava.   

She has little videos for all sorts of things: different cast-ons, stitches like SSK, (what is THAT!?), increases and decreases, a glossary, etc.  She is my sistah.

I cannot commend it highly enough. KnittingHelp.com.  Go visit!

That Sock

 

Ah, aren't you nice...you asked to see the sock.  Well, here you go.  :)  The heel appeareth! 

Update on the Weekend Update

 

Tina and Amy want you to know that my weekend got significantly better after Saturday night!  Thanks for asking.  The problems early on involved some bad sushi (shudder) and therefore missing a campout with motorcycle friends. 

Subsequently, eating a bunch of other stuff to try to feel better from feeling sick (yeah, I know, I'm jest not right). 

But Sunday I sat outside with the doggies to knit.  It was beautiful, sunny and breezy.  Oak flowers (pollen thingies) fell on me, on them, and into my drink.   

  Everything is now covered with the yellow pollen.  Cars, driveways, windows, my eyeballs.  I can't sit outside again for about a week, due to the allergicalness of it all.  And the dogs are like dust mops anyway; you should see them with this stuff stuck all over them.  Yuck. 

My sock is progressing fantastically.  Turning the heel was SO not a big deal and I feel like a big goop for putting it off so long.  Let me of course say that I had to frog it at least once, and there is a wonky place where I purled when I should have knit for about 8 stitches - which part I DID NOT frog!  So now there's a "design element" in my sock heel.  Hey, that's cool! 

Picking up the stitches to make the gusset was very annoying.  However, I'm working down the foot and life will go on!  Tried to give you a picture but the tech is not cooperating. 

Weekend Update

(which I watched on SNL last night...it was a re-run from January.  Until I got to the part where they made fun of NY Gov. Patterson's limited vision.  NOW I remember why I stopped watching SNL!)

Bad night Friday, bad day Saturday.  Today is looking better.  Have re-loaded the repaired antique china cabinet, put a roast in the tiny crock pot, repotted two plants, worked on sock heel. 

Sigh.